Steamdoc Overview

Steamdoc is document production system designed for rapid, flexible construction and maintenance of massive documents. There is an emphasises on separation between content and separation, and on allowing document definitions to stay in plain text.

Status

Stable for a subset of features. It’s miles from being finished. Contains quite ugly code in places.

Requirements

Requirements are not met at the moment, but it is stable and can be used as for simple document management.

Completed

1. System allows users to rapidly produce documents at a content level and with no layout distractions whatsoever
2. Wiki-like editing frontend based on a simple markup syntax
3. Tracks version control (not done)
4. Documents can be browsed via web single page

Incomplete

1. Frontend built on word to allow the software to leverage the wonders of a great subset of that tool’s GUI while otherwise isolating users from its horror.
2. Documents can be displayed on the web split over many pages
3. Documents can be compiled into a high-quality PDF form.
4. Supports verion control and diffs.
5. Supports diagram production via something like Graph:easy or dot notation.
6. Simple security model

Other Notes

It’s mostly written in python. The PDF bridge will probably wind up being done via troff. The word frontend will probably be done in C# for Word 2007.